The University of Maryland

I’ve addressed Maryland itself in an earlier blog, but have yet to discuss its University, which is where I went for undergrad from Fall 1986 (F86) to Summer 1990 (SS90).

College Park.   UMCP is the flagship campus, located northeast of DC within the Beltway, straddling Route 1.   The campus is actually fairly large, and continues to grow.  The northeast section has a huge agricultural zone full of long barns, the kind you find at agricultural fairs.  My dad told me that UM was quite advanced in agricultural technology, something about breeding better Thanksgiving turkeys or juicier pigs.  Something like that. 

There’s also UM-Eastern Shore, UM-Baltimore Campus, UM-Baltimore County (Catonsville), and UM-University College.  UM-UC covers the overseas operations around the world, primarily on-base education at US military bases.  The Munich campus closed in 1992.  From what I understand, although California’s state university system dwarfs Maryland’s, excluding UM-UC, if you add in UM-UC, Maryland’s system exceeds California’s. 

History.  The campus began in 1856, with Morrill Hall as the oldest – and it looks it, almost “H.P. Lovecraft Hall”.  It turned into Maryland Agricultural College (MAC), with mandatory ROTC, until it finally renamed University of Maryland in 1920. 

Majors.  I started out as a government & politics (GVPT) major, with most of my classes in LeFrak Hall.  By sophomore year I realized that business and government complemented each other, so I added a second curriculum of general business (BMGT) to get a second degree, for 156 credits in 4 years.  To do this I had to take summer courses after sophomore year (1988) and two more courses after spring semester of senior year (1990), but still managed to do it, so I could start law school in Fall 1990 at George Mason.  I actually applied for the University of Maryland law school, but was not accepted.  My diplomas, a B.A. in GVPT and B.S. in BMGT, are dated August 1990, with the commencement ceremony in December 1990.

Dorms.  The UCMP campus has 9 high rise dorms (plus 2 low-rise), of which I was in Hagerstown Hall for my freshman year (F86/S87).   The North Hill dorms were somewhat run down when I was there; I knew people in Somerset Hall, and a friend of mine – not an asshole – lived in Wicomico Hall.   I moved to Talbot Hall for sophomore year (F87/S88) and fall of junior year (F88), then to Montgomery Hall (South Hill) for spring (S89) and senior year (F89/S90).   Plus there are Old Leonardtown and New Leonardtown apartments on the other side of Route 1, just behind Frat Row.  I stayed in New Leonardtown during summer school, SS I&II 1988, and SSI in 1990.   As you can see from the pictures, the campus is sprawled out and very attractive.  Brief bits of “National Treasure II” (the Quad) and “St Elmo’s Fire” (Frat Row) are filmed at UMCP. 

Sophomore and junior years meant 4 different roommates, all 4 being unpleasant experiences.  Freshman year was Mike, who was fine; and senior year I had a huge single, in a suite with a bunch of guys I got along with fine.  Aside from Gene and I, they were all Theta Chi brothers (Gene, where are you?).  By the way, my brother also went to UMCP, a year behind me, and during my senior year – his junior year – he was also in Montgomery Hall, in the middle section.  My sister went to UM, had to drop out when she and her first husband moved to Arizona, and came back later and finished that off.  So our family has no less than three UMCP graduates.

Terps.  Our mascot, technically the Terrapins (a small aquatic turtle which no one fears) and personified by Testudo at sports events.  UMCP won the NCAA basketball tournament in 2002.  Neil O’Donnell was our QB while I was there, before going on to the Steelers.  Someone said our lacrosse program was supposed to be good.  I have no clue.  We were in the Atlantic Coast Conference, competing with UVA, WVU, Wake Forest, UNC, NC State, Duke, and Clemson, but now we’re in the BIG 10, a group I’ve ignored because until recently, UM was not part of it.  I can’t say I follow Maryland that zealously – if there’s a game on a TV at the gym I’ll pay attention. 

In all the time I was at UM living on campus, I maybe went to two football games at Byrd Stadium and one basketball game at Cole Field House – my usual reason for visiting either was to jog (Cole) or get horribly sunburned (Byrd Stadium).  Richie Coliseum was where we saw concerts:  Black Sabbath in 1994, and Megadeth earlier. 

Diamondback.  The school newspaper.  I remember the comics:  Clyde (Al Via), Pat Schaefer, plus the overindulgent Eric Dunn & his “aren’t I cool?” crap.  After I graduated Aaron McGruder started off his own strip which later became The Boondocks.  And there were our competing editorialists, Eron Shosteck (the GOP point of view, somewhat of a minority at uber-liberal UMCP, where you could fit the College Republicans in one room), and Dave Bitet, giving us the Opposition perspective, since the White House was in Republican hands during my time at UMCP – 1986-1990, i.e. Ronald Reagan and then George H.W. Bush, the father of the none-too-popular George W. Bush and his politically flailing brother Jeb. 

Alumni.  Jim Henson (Muppet guy) is the most famous.  I suppose Larry David (Seinfeld & Curb Your Enthusiasm) is #2, followed by the guy who wrote The Wire (David Simon).  Carly Fiorina, Connie Chung, and Oprah’s friend Gayle, are also UMCP alumni.  

Jerry

After that prior blog about “Better Call Saul” (season 2 starts on 2/15!  Don’t miss it!) I thought it was about time to address a real life attorney, who I’ll call Jerry, for whom I had the pleasure of working from 1992 to 1998, immediately out of law school.  

“Vexation”.   Iron Butterfly, one of these late 60s-early 70s bands, had little nice to say about fellow travelers Blue Cheer, stating that they consider BC “more vexation than inspiration”.  I might say that about Jerry, because he was TOO brilliant.  Either you have his natural talent or you don’t:  no amount of hard work and study will ever come close to him; you have to work and prepare and train just to be competent.  Forget about reaching his level in your lifetime.  Anyhow.

In the beginning.   Jerry is from Philadelphia, went to UPenn for undergrad, USC for law school, and immediately passed the California bar and joined a megafirm in L.A.  Starting salary was $80,000 (back in 1990) for an 80 hour week, which was essentially two 40 hour $40k jobs stacked on top of each other, working for ruthless attorneys who would fire you for any reason.  An excellent recipe for a heart attack at age 25. 

So he moved east and worked for the NRA (back when their headquarters was in DC) until that job was reorganized out of existence and he was abruptly laid off.  A friend of his suggested he set up his own firm, and he did so: working out of his rented house on Route 50 in Arlington, with his dog on his lap. 

This is where I come in.  In fall 1992 I was on my third (and final) year of law school, but not too happy.  I managed zero summer associate positions and was putting books back on the shelf at the law school library for $5.50/hr, 10 hours per week.   Jerry used the same library for research (back in the days before everything was easily accessible on the Internet, which we didn’t have back then) and told the librarian he needed a replacement for his prior law clerk, who had left to join a major firm.  I got the job, working 20 hours a week at $10/hour for a real attorney, with real clients and real cases.   I could finally purchase a new car (1992 Pontiac Firebird) and my life was much better.

We moved from his house, to an office inside a moving company (January 1993) (pretty much the same as Jimmy McGill tucked away inside a nail salon), to the accountants’ suite next door (sometime later in 1993), and then into a suite in Falls Church in March 1995.  During this time I passed the Maryland and Virginia bars and became an associate instead of a law clerk.   However, by 1998 Jerry managed to snag a job at a top local firm which did nothing but contested divorces, and closed up his own practice, putting me out of a job.  I bounced around from firm to firm from 1998-2002 until finally winding up where I am now, with a solo practice in Falls Church.

Back to Jerry.  Certain major cases are worth nothing on his part.

Jury Trial.   Back in 1993 he took a big case:  a drug dealer had been beaten by two Montgomery County narc officers and a Greenbelt police officer.  He sued them all in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, in Baltimore.  Jerry got onto the case pro hac vice (out-of-state attorney allowed to handle specific case under narrow circumstances) so we did it.  This was a three day jury trial, and the defendant – by this time, only the Greenbelt cop – was represented by the senior partner at defense firm, some 60 year old veteran.  Talk about David vs. Goliath.  In addition to being a dope dealer, our client was too stupid to even be sympathetic, so we lost.  The genius of this is that Jerry got just as much experience doing this loser case he was probably going to lose anyway as he would have from a better case which might have been winnable.  Never, in a million years, would I have done that.  Amazing.

Custody Battle.  I’ll bookend this with the 1998 case which got Jerry hired by the firm.  Yet again, he was up against a big firm, all by himself, though the firm sent an associate instead of their top lawyer, mainly because it looked like a slam dunk for them.  Our client, who I’ll call Mrs Angry, had lost custody of her two kids to her sleazy ex-husband, Mr. Angry.  She was petulant, abrasive, and never in a good mood.  However, she had good reason to be upset given the circumstances.  She was fighting to regain custody, but the ex-husband’s expert witness, a behavioral psychologist ("Dr Expert") wrote a scathing report which crucified Mrs Angry and made her look psychotic.  She had no expert of her own. 

With help from his mother, who was a psychiatrist back up in Philadelphia, Jerry crafted a stunning cross examination of Dr. Expert, in which, item by item, he retracted his negative assessments and Mrs. Angry was rehabilitated and vindicated.  Result?  Victory plucked from the jaws of defeat, such a stunning victory that the divorce lawyers in Fairfax County were all talking about it – and so Jerry got a much better job.

Expert Trial.  As I said earlier, much of Jerry’s success is not emulatable, as it comes from an immense reserve of natural talent which cannot be taught:  either you have it or you don’t.  However, I did try to learn from him as much as I could, and one more recent case, in Maryland, is an example of this.

I represented a restaurant owner sued by a general contractor who was supposed to build up a Japanese steakhouse.  The contract fell through because a Chinese restaurant in the same complex successfully enjoined the opening thanks to a restrictive covenant in its lease with the complex’ landlord.  The overall contract was for $250,000, the contractor claimed he was entitled to 75% of that, minus amounts paid already.  The contractor had an expert willing to back up his claims, whereas my guy was too cheap to hire his own.  However, I did persuade him to pay for an expert to help me prepare for trial. 

Our own expert reviewed his opponent’s “qualifications” and his report, and explained why both were 100% bogus.  When it came to trial – a bench trial in Annapolis – I shredded their expert on cross examination.  Finally the judge ruled in our favor, citing that he had zero faith in the plaintiff’s expert’s testimony. 

Fun & Guns.  Working with Jerry wasn’t always court and business.  He loved guns, and infected me with his passion.  One day we took off to Alexandria to visit Old Town Armory, his favorite gun store.  I asked him if we had any business at the courts in Alexandria, and he quickly answered, “NOPE!”  Range time was part of the job, though we did represent quite a few clients petitioning for concealed weapon permits before Virginia switched to a “shall issue” law, which meant I’d drive down to Richmond to drop off appeal documents at the Court of Appeals, then jump back in the car and drive back. 

We also had nonverbal codes for certain clients.  We’d get another call, Jerry would be on the phone with another client, and he’d mouth “WHO IS IT?”  My response?  Seductive hand on the hip = his wife.  Sad guy looking through prison bars = same poor guy in prison who called collect nonstop.  Petulant fit = Mrs Angry. 

*

Nowadays Jerry runs his own firm, located in Fairfax County, which does nothing but contested divorces.  Anyone needing a top notch divorce attorney in northern Virginia would be well advised to hire him – if your spouse hasn’t already done so.  I’m glad to have worked for him for those 5 years, which gave me the starting experience I needed, at least in traffic, criminal, and divorce matters.  Thanks, Jerry.

Parks and Recreation

Nope, not the TV show.  Though Aubrey Plaza, Rashida Jones, and the ever-politically incorrect Nick Offerman tempt me to get into that one, if Adam Scott or Amy Poehler can’t (I’m neutral about Chris Pratt).

A few years back there was a documentary show, “Life After People”, on the History Channel from 2009-2010, which attempted to show what Earth will be like millions of years in the future after humanity is wiped out (however that might happen) and nature re-asserts itself.  I doubt the scenarios would be plausible if our demise came about by global thermonuclear war, but diseases, malnutrition, or simple failure to perpetuate our existence might work.  Anyhow.   Places like California would revert to desert, swampy places like DC and NY would be overgrown with plants, and overall things would look much different.

I have noticed a few local malls which seem to be running down.  Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virginia, is half closed, though Sears and Macy’s (the anchor stores) seem to be OK – as is the children’s play zone in the middle and its miniature choo-choo train (not steam powered, by the way).  Frederick Mall, in Frederick, Maryland, where we used to go as kids, is now KAPUT, closed up completely.

Then you look at places like Central Park, Prospect Park, and Forest Park (Springfield, Mass.) which are fantastic.  Clearly many clever people have managed to inject “beautiful nature” smack in the middle of major cities. 

So where you do have instances of declining commercial activity, maybe it would be a good idea to convert them back into parks, if possible.  How to make it work economically?   I don’t trust Bernie Sanders nor the NFL to figure that out (“taxes!”) but hopefully someone more imaginative than either of them can come up with something.  Recycling malls into parks sounds like a good thing.  It’s worth a try.

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society

I’ve already discussed the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft himself (January 18, 2008).  The man died in 1937 with no children, already divorced from his wife Sonia Greene.  He was relatively unknown at the time outside a few fans and a circle of pulp fiction writers such as Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Robert Bloch, and August Derleth.  Derleth was the one who engineered the republication of his stories in the 1960s, compiled in paperback form, which finally led to HPL’s widespread fame and posthumous success.

            Nowadays his heritage is continued by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS).

First, a bit of background.

Call of Cthulhu.  This was a roleplaying game (RPG) from Chaosium, the company who brought you RuneQuest, probably the best competitor to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D) (made by TSR).   Chaosium took the basic roleplaying model they developed in detail for RQ and adapted it, in much simpler form, to various other types of themes, the other major one being a Melnibone/Moorcock/Elric RPG called Stormbringer, which we also played.  Call of Cthulhu was based on HPL’s works and set (for the most part) in the same time period, i.e. the US in the 1920s and 30s.  Sanity was added as a feature, meaning that player characters could literally go insane from the various horrendous monsters they encountered.   They could also learn spells.  My major two characters were Martin Muller, a German member of the nascent National Socialist German Workers Party; and Charles Marx, a West Point graduate and Great War veteran. 

From there, some people – not our gaming clique – took it a step further and developed a live-action roleplaying system called Cthulhu Lives.  The HPLHS started out making props for this game, and eventually morphed into something far more interesting.

After making a few props and t-shirts, they ventured into turning HPL’s stories into movies and radio shows.  “The Call of Cthulhu” was done as a silent film, whereas, somewhat later, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, which is the story about the Mi-Go, Fungi from Yuggoth (Pluto), was done as a “talkie”.  Leaving these two movies aside, most of the HPLHS output has been “radio broadcasts”, or as they call it, “Dark Adventure Radio Theatre”. 

As TV didn’t make its debut until after WWII, and Lovecraft died in 1937, the dominant form of entertainment aside from movies during Lovecraft’s time was radio shows.   My parents, who grew up in the 1930s and 40s, can remember those shows fondly, particularly “The Shadow” and “The Lone Ranger”.  For my part, I grew up in Maryland in the 1970s, so it was TV for me.  Radio was something I ignored until the Greaseman & G. Gordon Liddy came along in the 80s and 90s; I’ve never been a fan of Howard Stern.

They started with “At The Mountains of Madness”, and continued with “The Dunwich Horror”, “The Shadow Out Of Time”, “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (2 discs), “The Colour Out of Space”, “Herbert West: Reanimator”, “Dreams in the Witchhouse”, “Imprisoned With The Pharaohs”, “The Horror At Red Hook”, and most recently, “Dagon – War of the Worlds”, which adapts Orson Welles’ famous 1937 broadcast to HPL’s stories, mainly “Dagon”, which was originally very short and would not sustain an entire show on its own.  All of these come with an impressive array of props and materials which really add to the experience, plus “ads” for contemporary fake products, most interestingly cigarettes, but they’re also available in MP3 format for those who want the bare minimum.  Even if you’ve read the stories and know the plot beforehand, they do a remarkable job of instilling drama and excitement.  In fact, it’s a shame that these stories weren’t given this treatment when they were originally published. 

What would HPL himself think of all this?  We can only speculate.  Sadly, one side effect of Lovecraft’s eruption of posthumous popularity in the 60s was a spate of horrendously done, low budget horror movies based on his stories.  “The Dunwich Horror” seems the most faithful, and features Dean Stockwell (From “Quantum Leap”) as Wilbur Whately, whereas “The Colour Out of Space” looks like an ordinary, contemporary film for which they simply expropriated the name of the story and tacked it onto a movie which had nothing to do with it.  Later, more recent films like “Reanimator” and “From Beyond” simply did the same thing, except that it was modern shock horror films which received the nominal HPL adaptation.  Of these, only “The Resurrected”, set in modern day Providence, Rhode Island, essentially “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, is remotely endurable, though whoever did that one was clearly attempting maximum homage and faithfulness aside from the time frame, probably due to budget constraints.  I’ll admit that this story lends itself well to a modern context anyway.

Getting back to HPL himself.  The man was somewhat cantankerous, difficult to please, and also had a nasty dose of intolerance for non-WASP people.  My own assessment is that the HPLHS does a fantastic job of adapting his works the way they do, especially the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre series.  However, I’m not so sure Lovecraft himself would approve.  But I’d say that has more to do with his own idiosyncrasies and hangups and not due to any errors or misappropriations from Branney, Lehman, and the rest of the HPLHS crew.  To them, as a fan of Lovecraft – and impossible to speak on behalf of the deceased himself – I say thank you and keep up the good work.